Guests fill their plates with food served buffet-style at social functions, and typically either hold their plates in cantilever fashion by gripping peripheral edges of the plates, or balance their plates on their laps. If drinks are also served, the guests typically either hold their drink containers in their other hands, or balance the drink containers on their plates. Due to the difficulty in performing such balancing, and due to the difficulty of supporting the plates and the drink containers without food or liquid spillage, guests often seek out a table or like supporting surface or even the floor, to support their plates and drink containers. Yet, this action tends to anchor guests to a specific location and prevents the guests from roaming and socializing. In a similar vein, customers of take-out or drive-through restaurants, snack bars, concession stands, and like premises, who are served food on plates and drinks in drink containers, often find it difficult to support them all without spillage, especially when leaving and carrying the food and drink away from the premises for subsequent consumption at another location, for example, at their homes, in their vehicles, or in their seats at movies, concerts, sporting events, etc.
Another problem resides in the management of eating utensils. Once an individual has been served with food on a plate and a drink in a container, there is usually no room, or available hand, for holding eating utensils. Since a food-laden plate is typically held in one hand and a liquid-filled drink container is typically held in the other hand, the utensils are often stuck directly into the food or placed on top of the food, or perhaps placed in one's pocket, if available. As the individual proceeds from place to place, the jarring from walking sometimes causes the utensils to fall off the plate, in which case the individual is more or less helpless to retrieve them.
After consumption of the food and drink, the known plates are typically discarded. Yet, it would be desirable not to simply throw the plates away in the trash, but to encourage and motivate some sort of physical, preferably outdoor, activity, not only to enhance the happy, fun atmosphere of the social function, but also to fight obesity by having the individuals exert themselves physically.
Skilled artisans will appreciate that elements in the figures are illustrated for simplicity and clarity and have not necessarily been drawn to scale. For example, the dimensions and locations of some of the elements in the figures may be exaggerated relative to other elements to help to improve understanding of embodiments of the present disclosure.
The components of the aerodynamic device have been represented where appropriate by conventional symbols in the drawings, showing only those specific details that are pertinent to understanding the embodiments of the present disclosure so as not to obscure the disclosure with details that will be readily apparent to those of ordinary skill in the art having the benefit of the description herein.